Thinking about my last post, I realized how ridiculous a laugh track is. Zizek glosses over it with that quote I provided last time; the laugh track basically serves as way for us to realize something is funny and react to it without actually having to react. That is the ridiculous part; the ridiculous part of the laugh track is how far out of touch from reality it is. TV shows are there to mimic reality to the point where we can identify with the characters to the point where we escape reality for 22 minutes. However, there is no laugh track in reality.

Well, Zizek has managed to fry my brain in ways that only G&D, and possibly Huyssen, have fried it. I like to think of myself as the everyman, capable of understand pretty much everything that is thrown my way. However, I feel lost, dazed, and confused by these past couple of readings. The lack of a coherent point or flow has driven me mad. One page will talk about capitalism, then skip to phalluses and anal, and then decide to jump to anti-Semitism and ideologies.

Nothing of any of this in the "TV" image, which suggests nothing, which mesmerizes, which itself is nothing but a screen, not even that: a miniaturized terminal that, in fact, is immediately located in your head -- you are the screen, and the TV watches you -- it transistorizes all the neurons and passes through like a magnetic tape -- a tape, not an image. (51)

Which is more postmodern?

"The painter is in principle that only fully independent producer, who as a rule needs no further intermediation to realize a work of art." (p.94)

v.

"Television, which was so decisive in the passage to a new epoch, has no modernist past. It became the most powerful medium of all in the postmodern period itself." (p.122)

Conclusion: